The day after the night before: Trump caps fractious post-midterm press conference by firing attorney general Jeff Sessions
President has lost the House of Representatives, but remains bullish about his ability to implement ‘Maga’ agenda
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Donald Trump capped a fraught midterm election period by firing his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, in a move that immediately provoked fear he may move against the Russia investigation headed by special counsel Robert Mueller.
The US president spent the day after the night before sparring with journalists in a rare set-piece press conference at the White House. The Republican, who appeared tired and on a short fuse, told one reporter to “just sit down” and called him “the enemy of the people” as he was grilled for some 90 minutes after his party lost control of the House of Representatives.
Nonetheless, Mr Trump sought to portray the GOP’s showing as a historic success, with candidates having prevailed in an unusual number of Senate races, he said. In one closely-watched contest, the Texas incumbent Ted Cruz narrowly defeated Beto O’Rourke, the Democrat darling of social media, who observers later tipped as a possible candidate for president in 2020.
During his news conference Mr Trump appeared to extend an olive branch to Democrats, with whom he said he believed his Republican colleagues could produce “a lot” of legislation, particularly on infrastructure. He has pledged to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to modernise crumbling elements of the US’ road system and for improvements in other areas.
But he said that bipartisan working would be contingent on his opponents refraining from opening a string of investigations into his affairs. Democrats have already said they plan to do just that, probing the president’s tax returns, alleged conflicts of interest and other sore points now that they control several influential House committees.
Mr Trump’s first public appearance following the polls veered wildly from outright conflict with the media to praising incoming House speaker Nancy Pelosi and envisioning peace, love and harmony among politicians and their constituents – pointing the finger at journalists for having sown division in the past.
The president hit out at CNN‘s Jim Acosta in particular after the reporter questioned him first over his rhetoric on immigration and then on Mr Mueller’s investigation. Mr Trump told Mr Acosta, who at times spoke over him and refused to relinquish his microphone, that “CNN should be ashamed of itself having you working for them”.
He also berated a black reporter for asking a “racist question” about his decision to declare himself a nationalist. Mr Trump was asked by Yamiche Alcindor, of PBS Newshour, whether his rhetoric had “emboldened” white nationalists. Mr Trump said that “it’s a very racist question” and that “it’s a very terrible thing you said to me”, adding: ”I don’t believe it ... why do I have my highest numbers with African-Americans?”
As reporters gathered themselves following the marathon press conference, another bombshell dropped – Jeff Sessions had resigned at the president’s request. The attorney general’s sacking came after months of very public vitriol directed his way by Mr Trump, who was incensed by the former Alabama senator’s decision to recuse himself from oversight of Mr Mueller’s probe into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign for president and Russia.
“Since the day I was honoured to be sworn in as attorney general of the United States, I came to work at the Department of Justice every day determined to do my duty and serve my country,” Mr Sessions wrote in his resignation letter.
His departure – televised and made while surrounded by applauding colleagues including his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, and his successor, Matthew Whitaker – sparked warnings of a “constitutional crisis”. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and others warned Mr Trump not to move against Mr Mueller now that Mr Sessions was out of the way.
See below how we covered the midterms, and the aftermath, live
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This year's midterm elections include more women on the ballot than ever before.
As of today, women only account for roughly a fifth of the House and Senate, AP reports. Depending on who wins today, that percentage could shift significantly. 235 women won their primaries for the House, and a record of 22 in the Senate. 16 women have been nominated for gubernatorial races.
Long lines and malfunctioning machines marred the first hours of voting in some precincts across the U.S.
Some of the biggest problems Tuesday were in Georgia, a state with a hotly contested gubernatorial election. Voters reported waiting up to three hours to vote.
At a polling place in Snellville, Georgia, more than 100 people took turns sitting in children's chairs and on the floor as they waited in line for hours.
Voter Ontaria Woods said about two dozen people who had come to vote left because of the lines.
At a poll site in Atlanta, voters waited in the rain in long lines that stretched around the building.
Hannah Ackermann said officials at the polling site offered various explanations for the delay, including blaming workers who didn't show up and overloaded machines.
↵Barack Obama has tweeted to encourage people to go out and vote. He has spent much of recent days arguing how important it is – and is now encouraging people to make good on it.
Donald Trump has been spending the last hour or so retweeting a variety of posts from over the campaign period, which include endorsements of individual candidates and a range of general statements.
Here's Obama's full pre-election day message, collated from his Twitter:
Tomorrow’s elections might be the most important of our lifetimes. The health care of millions is on the ballot. Making sure working families get a fair shake is on the ballot. The character of our country is on the ballot.
When we've been at such crossroads before, Americans have made the right choice. Not because we sat back and waited for history to happen -- but because we marched, and mobilized, and voted. We made history happen.
When you vote, you have the power to protect voting rights. To make sure our criminal justice system treats everyone equally under the law. To strengthen laws that protect women in the workplace from harassment – and make sure they’re paid equally.
When you vote, you have the power to make it easier for a student to afford college, and harder for a disturbed person to shoot up a classroom. When you vote, you have the power to make sure a family keeps its health insurance.
Here's a full write-up from the Associated Press on the long lines, malfunctioning machines – and the dark background against which all of this is happening:
Long lines and malfunctioning machines marred the first hours of voting in some precincts across the country Tuesday. Some of the biggest problems were in Georgia, a state with a hotly contested gubernatorial election, where some voters reported waiting up to three hours to vote.
At a polling place in Snellville, Georgia, more than 100 people took turns sitting in children's chairs and on the floor as they waited in line for hours. Voting machines at the Gwinnett County precinct did not work, so poll workers offered provisional paper ballots while trying to get a replacement machine.
One voter, Ontaria Woods, said about two dozen people who had come to vote left because of the lines.
"We've been trying to tell them to wait, but people have children. People are getting hungry. People are tired," Woods said. Woods said she and others turned down the paper ballots because they "don't trust it."
Joe Sorenson, a spokesman for the county's supervisor of elections, said some precincts "have had issues with express polls," devices election workers use to check in voters and create access cards for voting machines.
Across the United States, even before Tuesday's vote, there were a wide variety of concerns with voting and registration systems around the country — from machines that changed voter selections to registration forms tossed out because of clerical errors.
Election officials and voting rights groups have feared that voter confidence in the results could be undermined if such problems become more widespread Tuesday, as millions of Americans decide pivotal races for Congress and governor.
Georgia's governor's race is one of the most closely watched contests, pitting Democrat Stacey Abrams, who is seeking to be the first black woman in U.S. history to be elected governor against Brian Kemp, the veteran secretary of state who has come under fire from Democrats for overseeing an election in which he is on the ballot.
Reports of security vulnerabilities within the state's online voter registration portal prompted a flurry of accusations from Kemp's office, which claimed without providing evidence that Democrats had tried to hack into the system. Democrats dismissed that as an effort to distract voters from a problem in a system Kemp oversees.
In a voting precinct at a senior living complex in Atlanta, voters waited in the rain in long lines that stretched around the building. Confused workers turned voters away from the parking lot.
Hannah Ackermann said election officials at the polling site in Fulton County offered various explanations for the delay, including blaming workers who didn't show up and overloaded machines.
County elections director Ricard Barron said had heard about long lines, but no other issues. He said some of the long lines are "because the ballot is really long."
Reports of broken ballot scanners surfaced at polling places across New York City. Turnout was so heavy at one packed precinct on Manhattan's Upper West Side that the line to scan ballots stretched around a junior high school gym on Tuesday morning. Poll workers there told voters that two of the roughly half-dozen scanners were malfunctioning and repairs were underway.
There was also confusion in Phoenix, Arizona, after a polling site was foreclosed on overnight. The owners of the property locked the doors, taking election officials by surprise. Voters had been sent to another precinct nearby, but Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes tweeted that the location in Chandler was up and running shortly after 7 a.m. Tuesday.
There has been concern that last-minute court rulings on voter ID requirements, the handling of absentee ballots and other issues in a handful of states will sow confusion among voters and poll workers.
"We expect poll workers will be overwhelmed, just as voters are overwhelmed, and there will be lots of provisional ballots," said Sara Henderson, head of Common Cause in Georgia, where voting-rights groups have been raising numerous concerns about election security and voter access.
The problems come amid a surge of interest, with registrations and early-voting turnout running well ahead of what is typically seen during a midterm election.
The election marks the first nationwide voting since Russia targeted state election systems in the 2016 presidential race. Federal, state and local officials have been working to make the nation's myriad election systems more secure. They have beefed up their cybersecurity protections and improved communications and intelligence-sharing.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, FBI and other federal agencies have opened a command center to help state and local election offices with any major problems that arise.
There have been no signs so far that Russia or any other foreign actor has tried to launch cyberattacks against voting systems in any state, according to federal authorities. There was also no indication that any systems have been compromised that would prevent voting, change vote counts, or disrupt the ability to tally votes, U.S. officials said.
But early voting and voter registration has been problematic in a number of states. Problems include faulty machines in Texas and North Carolina, inaccurate mailers in Missouri and Montana, and voter registration problems in Tennessee and Georgia.
In other states, including Kansas, Election Day polling places have been closed or consolidated, leading to worries that voters will be disenfranchised if they can't find a way to get there and cast a ballot.
DHS officials have boasted that the 2018 midterms will be the most secure election in U.S. history, pointing to federal intrusion-detection sensors that will protect "90 percent of election infrastructure," as DHS Undersecretary Christopher Krebs tweeted in mid-October. Those sensors sniff for malicious traffic, and are installed on election systems in 45 states.
But similar sensors used at the federal level have performed badly. According to a Sept. 14 letter from the Office of Management and Budget, those sensors had a 99 percent failure rate from April 2017 onward, when they detected only 379 out of almost 40,000 "incidents" across federal civilian networks.
Nationally, some 6,500 poll watchers are being deployed by a coalition of civil rights and voting advocacy groups to assist people who encounter problems at the polls. That is more than double the number sent to polling places in 2016, while the number of federal election monitors has declined.
Be sure to remember – especially given the various problems with voting this year, and the expected high turnout – that if you're in the line to vote when it closes, you have to be given your chance to cast your ballot.
And you should also remember that you shouldn't take a picture of your completed ballot. (You can take a photo of a blank one, but where's the fun in that?) Better to take a selfie with the sticker they give out at the polling place.
Fox News has released a statement following criticism of the appearance of Sean Hannity, one of its presenters, at a Trump campaign event last night. Here's the latest, from NPR's David Folkenflik:
"Fox News does not condone any talent participating in campaign events. We have an extraordinary team of journalists helming our coverage tonight and we are extremely proud of their work," the network said. "This was an unfortunate distraction and has been addressed."
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